Pelo Amor de Deus!

Audrey Tatou, for certain France's most charismatically engaging young actress today, made "God is Great, I'm Not" before "Amelie" projected her to international acclaim. This release, coming quietly after the famous film, has had little if any U.S. theater exposure but it's a DVD that cries out for word-of-mouth boosterism.

Tatou plays Michele, a self-proclaimed "top model" (well she clearly does have a successful career going). More to the point she a 100% certifiable flake who flits from religion to religion seeking wisdom and, perhaps, a sense of belonging.

After a party she meets veterinarian Francois (Edouard Baer). A very short acquaintanceship leads to a one-night stand ending in a dashed ambulance run to the hospital because Michele has OD'd. Attempted suicide? A mistake? It's a mystery but Michele's closest friend, Valerie the Novice Therapist (Julie Depardieu), convinces Francois he has some continuing responsibility for Michele. Just because of one night of hot sex? Well, it is France and the idea has a certain charm. Anyway, without it the film would end at this point. Francois has a quiet accommodating quality: he's the kind that a Michele will always enrapture.

Michele falls in love with Francois, a fellow comfortable as a "secular Jew." In his case that means he doesn't even want his apartment house neighbors to know his heritage. Absurd, declaims Michele, who proceeds to noisily attempt to affix a "mezuzah" to his front door (a Jewish talismanic article that observant members of that religion invariably have at each door in their homes sans the bathroom).

Anyway, the real fun is that Michele, bored with her past religious explorations, decides to study Judaism both with a rabbi and also in a class for possible converts - but only with Francois safely sitting beside her and actively participating. He IS besotted!

There's a lot of good humor as Francois allows himself to be drawn into Judaism - but only so far. Meanwhile Michele gets more serious about not only studying the religion but observing its very restrictive dietary precepts and other controlling laws.

So much for the basic plot-anything more would spoil the fun. But director Pascale Bailly has insured that no viewer need be Jewish to enjoy madcap Tatou's foray into that ancient religion.

Tatou has the most marvelous ability to instantly telegraph her feelings through economical but mesmerizing facial expressions. Born a century earlier, she would have been a silent film star to rival the Gish sisters, Pola Negri and many others.

She's the treat who makes this offbeat comedy (with a dollop of serious relationship issues) worth watching.

So rent it!

8/10

I just watched this movie and i felt i had to warn potential watchers : This is by no means a good movie.

You may have been lured into seeing it because of Audrey Tautou of Amelie's fame.

To put it simple : the scenario is so simple it could have fitted on a post it note. It's about a whimsy girl who tries to get in touch with her spirituality.

So she goes from one boyfriend to the other, and each time embraces the religion of his. There are huge problem with the whole plot : we don't know how everything started. There is a tiny little clue about her father being absent, but aside from that, there is no indication of her psychology, her childhood, her past experience of the main character. Nothing. Plus, to be honest she is quite despicable. She is just a spoiled little girl with too much time. At some point she tries to embrace Judaism, and it's the only time the movie conveys any interesting idea. The rest is as shallow and meaningless as the character portrayed by Audrey Tautou. Her male counterpart, a somewhat nihilist but well educated man, portrayed by Edouard Baer really fits in his role, alas the way he tries to seduce again and again a girl which he has rejected twice is simply not believable. How he could be interested by a person which apparently has no brain and exists only through other people's beliefs is beyond our comprehension.

We can even sense some possible twists that could occur during certain scenes, but the director is in this case less smart than the viewers : she just misses completely what could have made an interesting movie. Nothing of what french cinema is famous for. Everything that happens here mirrors the ten first minutes. After those ten minutes, the plot will simply not progress in spite of the various shallow characters thrown our way.

So what can be said about a movie that brings nothing vaguely looking like character development, that conveys absolutely no message, that is not funny at all (ok, maybe i smiled twice), and portrays a girl with cuteness as her only selling point, to sum it all ? I'd say it's a waste of time, plain and simple. I encourage you to stay away from this movie, and rather stay on the good impression you had when viewing Amélie. Don't buy it, don't rent it : just don't.

Tautouology should not be confused with tautology, which means 'the needless repetition of an idea'. Tautouology is concerned, on the contrary, with necessary repetitions, that is, with the annual recurrence of a species of elfin creature with large eyes, which once a year appears in films. Tautouology is the most recently created of scientific disciplines, and is thus an indicator of the relentless march of progress in science and technology. Tautous are very rare, and only one specimen is so far known to science. Although it is suspected that there may be a colony of Tautous somewhere, perhaps in France, this has never been proved. The private habits of the Tautou are entirely unknown, and it has never been observed in its burrow. Many theories have been formed about the Tautou, but they are all highly speculative. Certainly, the Tautou has been observed frequently in Paris, and it is thought that this rare creature may have some connection with the Paris catacombs, to which it may possibly retire at night (though this has never been reliably reported by a qualified observer). This film, 'God Is Great but I Am Tiny', preserves valuable evidence on film of the behaviour of the Tautou. This film was made immediately after 'Amelie', when the Tautou is estimated by science to have been 24 years of age. (Tautous are believed to live to a great age, perhaps even 100.) The Tautou is a neotonous creature, that is, it looks much younger than it is, and it preserves childlike characteristics into adulthood. In fact, it is believed by some that these infantilisms will never disappear, or at least many scientists hope not, and that the Tautou will still be a little girl when it reaches the age of 100 which is predicted for it. In this film, a fine contribution is made by Edouard Baer, who delivers an excellent performance as a human, as do Julie Depardieu, Anna Koch, Atmen Kelif, and other humans who surround and interact with the Tautou in this excellent natural history film. The direction of the film by Pascale Bailly is lively, if somewhat over-quirky at times, adopting very much a cinema verite approach (the references to Godard in the film did not go unnoticed by scientists). The theological implications of this study of the religious behaviour of the Tautou, as it wavers in the film from religion to religion (Catholicism, Buddhism, Judaism, you name it), is thought to be a comment upon Heidegger's views of 'being and essence'. Certainly the Tautou says at one point to Francois: 'You aren't Jewish enough.' The social interactions of the Tautou with the humans make this film fascinating to watch, as the Tautou shows extreme volatility, which the humans have trouble coping with. The Tautou is liable to change religions in the same way that the Arctic hare goes from brown to white when the snow falls. Tautou mood swings, emotional seizures, changes of hair style, clothing changes, alterations between loving and hating, all confirm the zoological conclusions arrived at on the basis of other evidence, that the Tautou has a hyper-sensitivity to its social environment and reacts badly to the withdrawal of love. This film is of extreme importance to the discipline of Tautouology, and is recommended to all serious students of this rare mammal.

Twenty-year-old Michele (Audrey Tatou, star of the hit film "Amelie") is a successful model but an emotional wreck. Desperate to find something to believe in, she has tried Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and more, all without success. But when she meets handsome Francois, twelve years her senior and a successful secular Jew, she has a religious awakening. Suddenly obsessed with Judaism, she is soon driving Francois crazy nailing up mezuzahs, keeping kosher, observing Shabbat and accusing him of not being Jewish enough! "God is Great...I am Small" is an unusually smart and contemporary comedy/drama that builds its story around controversial issues affecting today's Jewry: Who or what is a Jew? Is a secular or Reform Jew really Jewish? Is it important to speak Hebrew? Can a relationship be successful if one partner is observant and the other is not?

'Dieu est grand, je suis toute petite' is a little film by Pascale Bailly that spends a lot of time trying to tell a story in bits and pieces with numerous characters, interesting in and of themselves but confusing to the viewer, attempting to keep up with the breakneck speed of this French comedy. The saving grace is the presence of Audrey Tautou and a few other actors whose screen magnetism holds our interest.

Fresh from a breakup with a boyfriend Bertand (Mathieu Demy) top model Michèle (Tautou) is a wreck of a person flirting with all manner of religious outlets (Hindu, Buddhism, Catholicism, etc) trying to find something to make her crazy life make sense. She encounters a veterinarian François (Edouard Baer) who is a secular Jew (non-practicing, closeted, etc) and not only does she fall immediately into bed with him (and a next morning attempted suicide!) she begins to stalk him trying to embrace Judaism - a fact that at first drives François away and then a little mad himself. The manner in which Michèle and François study Judaism and all its graces and restrictions is (I think) the basis for the rest of the story: the filming technique of flashbacks and fragmentary moments and cutesy scribblings on pages are paced to confuse and make this simple story a maze to follow! Along the way we meet some interesting types including Valérie (Julie Depardieu) who opens her door to her first psychology patient (Thierry Neuvic) and promptly falls in love with him; Ali (Atmen Kelif) who is Michèle's nutty fashion photographer and a number of others. There are funny moments, touching moments, absurd moments, but they are loosely strung together. In the end this is a fun film in which it is a bit trying to connect all the dots! In French, English, and Hebrew with subtitles. Grady Harp